# 4619
Earlier today I blogged on the 2010 Tropical Cyclone Landfall Probabilities, but there is another fascinating project going on that hopes to quantify earthquake risks over a much longer span of time called the Global Earthquake Model or GEM.
This isn’t an attempt to provide real time early warning of impending earthquakes, but rather a way to gauge earthquake risks to regions of the world and their populations based on seismic activity, geological makeup of the area, and building construction and regulations.
There is a meeting today and tomorrow at the World Bank World Bank in Washington DC to show stakeholders and collaborators the progress to date.
First this report from Nature News, followed by a look at the GEM Website and a PDF file outlining the project’s goals.
Earthquake risk calculator goes global
Model should enable researchers to reduce vulnerability to seismic shocks.
A model could help people to calculate the risk of a local tremor.C. Cole/Los Angeles Times/MCT/NEWSCOM
A global project to predict the risk from earthquakes to different communities is edging closer to reality.
The Global Earthquake Model (GEM) will calculate seismic risk based on the geological characteristics of an area, as well as the types of building and the building regulations in place.
Results of the pilot phase are being announced at an outreach meeting in Washington DC on 3-4 June. So far, the project has produced technical tools needed to calculate risk, and software to help scientists work with the data. These tools, and the results they produce, will now be carefully checked before the first verified estimates of seismic risk — and global maps showing these risks — are released. All the models, the code used to write them and the resulting data will eventually be freely available.
The Global Earthquake Model webpage www.globalquakemodel.org/ has more information on this ongoing project.
You’ll find a downloadable PDF file (7.8mb) on the About page, that describes this project in detail.
